Reflective Analysis

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Expansion of reflection

I chose these three blogs because they were beautifully written and they correlated with my blog entirely, but, they were mostly based on theoretically negative connotations of sprawls, with the expection of one of Khadija's post.

 

Sayyida Ali – A Journey into the Urban

http://tturbanperceptions.blogspot.com/

             Sayyida’s blog was not related to sprawls directly however it related indirectly to my blog in more ways than one. The basis of my blog was to start with background information (so that the reader can get a good foundation of what urban sprawls were and its potential) and then evolve it into a more revisionist perspective. Sayyida’s blog basically did the same within each post as she “Journeyed into the Urban” assessing and evaluating the perceptions that constitutes the urban.
            Her posts such as ‘Inner City Life and Stereotypes’, ‘Urban Poverty and Cities of Aspiration’ and ‘A Population Affected by Transit Issues’  related to my poem on ‘Life’, Increasing Violence with Increasing Urbanisation’ and ‘Mobility’ respectively.

             But what really grabbed my attention was her post on ‘San Fernando: Planning Urban Growth’ where she wrote about her observations of the city and related sprawl as a continuous trend occurring on the southern part of the island. She saw sprawls as a major constraint to the agricultural sector. This is understandable but, I believe that a country cannot focus on agriculture and providing food for the poor when they may not have a private place to take part of in their meal, or they may not have a place to store extras so that they can provide their family with food for another day. I guess as the saying goes ‘There is a time and place for everything’ I believe she was trying to convey that ‘There is a place and space for everything’.

             What I do agree with is her stance on urban planning with relation to the Housing Development Cooperation (HDC) created by Act No. 24 of 2005. The governmental agency claims to aid with housing and planning yet their works seem to hamper instead of benefit the communities and many areas of sprawls have been victim to these deeds.

 

Tammi Thompson – Urbanisation and Disparity           

http://urbanizationdisparity.blogspot.com/

Tammi’s blogs were directly connected to my theme. She focused on ‘slums’ along the southern part of this Trinidad and though she seemed neutral on the whole concept of urban sprawls she had a great historical contents with her post. This helped me greatly in realising that areas develop according to location and its past histories.

What grasped my attention with her blog was her quote from her post “Disparities in Architecture (the urban poor)” which was “Just as a skyscraper is a symbolic part of an urban space which can represent wealth and innovation, huts or built up dwellings of the urban poor also reflect symbolism, which may be that of poverty and hardship.”

To me, this was beautiful. It summed up all my perceptions of sprawls and everything I stood for in my revisionist perspective of urban sprawls.

Overall she showed that ‘slum areas’ are closely intertwined with the cities of direct production and advanced services and thus are located near them, but separately in scattered clusters. With my blog I focused on these pockets of communities from the North West to the South West of the island and I could attest to this as I observed these same processes.

 

 

Khadija Stewart – The Dark Side of Urbanisation

http://negativeurbanisation.blogspot.com/

Firstly, I love her theme and the black background definitely helped in conveying her topic. Her topics of ‘Overcrowding’, ‘Traffic Congestion’, ‘Pollution/Litter’, ‘Disparities in Development’, ‘Environmental Degradation’ and ‘Poverty’ all linked to the characteristics of urban sprawl, but what really caught my eye was her post on ‘Urban Sprawls’.

She looked at different nuclei within the city of Port-of-Spain (I am assuming she refers to Port-of-Spain as a Multiple-Nuclei urban form), and focused on how each are being affected by sprawl according to the main service performed in that area.

She was the only of the three that gave the typical adverse scholarly attributes to sprawl and then in her abstract about the topic she wrote she actually “sees nothing wrong with sprawl”. I found that very interesting as she contradicted the very theme of her blog which “focused on the negative effects of urbanisation”. It revealed that even though she researched the topic and gather all the evidence of negativity she still saw this phenomenon as a building block for development which can be improved with better implementation of laws and policies.
            After reading this, I thought to myself “Wow”. I realised that I was not the only one who saw potential in these places habitually called favelas and slums; these disregarded places of mostly lower class societies who are often forgotten by the way side on the escalator to progress and development.

Her quote from Janet Bowman was also inspiring to read - “We still object to the whole concept of waving the urban sprawl rule. We believe it serves a purpose” ~ Janet Bowman

It related to everything that I tried to portray within my blogs, especially with the last six I did.

 

References

Ali, Sayyida. "A Journey Into The Urban." A Journey into the Urban. Accessed April 11, 2013.
http://tturbanperceptions.blogspot.com/

Stewart, Khadija. "The Dark Side of Urbanisation." The Dark Side of Urbanisation. Accessed April 12, 2013.

http://negativeurbanisation.blogspot.com/

Thompson, Tammi . "Urbanization & Disparity." Urbanization & Disparity. Accessed April 10, 2013

http://urbanizationdisparity.blogspot.com/